Deep Tissue Massages for Muscle Recovery

Throughout my first years of training I only cared about how to work out as much as possible. I was very focused on developing my muscle definition and getting more performant. I didn’t believe in overtraining and had the mindset that if something did hurt, then it will pass naturally. Either way, training had to continue because I had goals to achieve by specific timeframes.

However, it has now become clear to
me that it is a little bit foolish to have this kind of mindset and I learned
from my mistakes, as I suffered from one injury to another.

Honestly, my mindset back then was
to train 5 to 7 times a week. I aimed for hundreds of pull-ups, thousands of
pushups and squats every week. After such a week, I couldn’t even walk properly
because of the super intense muscle soreness caused by my training to failure.

I still think that it is okay to
push ourselves this much and over train. This being said, we have to take care
of our body and help it recover after a certain period of hard work.

Fortunately, so far I have only suffered
minor incidents like lower back pain, elbow pain, spasms and muscle pain,
damage to ligaments and tendons, muscle tension, blockages, one shoulder
dislocated etc. They were all due to the tremendous amount of volume and no
specific recovery period whatsoever. The only recovery I thought worth doing
was those 1-2 days a week for resting.

Any athlete who pushes himself a lot
will experiment these sorts of pains, they are normal. What it’s not normal
though, is to not listen to our body when it tells us that it had enough.

Once performance and recovery are
affected, all of our hard worked gains are diminished and the chances to bring
an even bigger injury are increasingly higher. Stop that!

Stretching is a way to recover and I
used to do a lot of it when I was a professional swimmer. Now, as a
calisthenics athlete, I rarely do stretching simply because I get bored and dislike
the process. So I had to find other methods. This is how I came across deep
tissue massage.

When Do We Overtrain?

We don’t need to feel pain in order
to understand that we had enough training. Any signs of extreme fatigue,
stiffness, the dysfunctionality of our muscles, lack of strength are all alarms
that we have to recover. This is how I know I overtrained.

After years of training with
bodyweight fitness, I know my strength or my fitness level. For me, if I am
functional, doing more than 150 pull-ups in a workout feels normal. I just know
the numbers I can hit for absolutely every exercise. So if I have problems in
reaching those 100 pull-ups then I know that I accumulated too much tension and
blockages. As a result, I get stiff and the nervous system will not unlock my
full strength and endurance. It’s the same for when you do push, squat, dips or
sprint.

One
Thing Leads to Another

I recently went through some painful
injuries at my knees caused by blockages and tensions accumulated in my calves,
hamstring, and quadriceps. I had these pains every time I went out for long
distance runs. After 35 minutes of continuous running, the pain started and
kept increasing. Then the problem persisted over the following 2-3 days.

This messed up my training schedule
because I wanted to do cardio and lose a couple of pounds. I knew I ran
correctly, wore the proper shoes etc. I also knew that I had no problems with
the knees themselves. It was a pain that radiated from those accumulated
tensions. As soon as I got out from a deep tissue massage session, all these
problems went away.

There have been years in which I’ve never had a proper massage. All of my upper body area got stiff too. My arms, back muscles, spinal muscles and so on had many blockages. When these things occur, the blood circulation isn’t flawless. As a consequence, we lose strength, mobility and the capacity to breath for recovering from a set another.

After
the Deep Tissue Massage

This kind of massage is extremely
painful but it has to be in order to achieve the desired results. On the
opposite pole, a superficial massage will never hurt, and in my opinion, is
done for relaxation only and not for long-term recovery. Thus, it renders
itself meaningless for recovery.

Don’t do a deep tissue massage if
you have muscle soreness caused by training because it will hurt even more.
Stop training, wait 2-3 days and then go get the deep tissue massage. My first
time, I did it having had muscle soreness and it was hell on earth for me.

However, soon after, all of my strength
and functionality were suddenly back to normal levels. The massage causes some
pain afterwards, hence you have to recover by resting 2-3 days [no workout
whatsoever].

What
is Deep Tissue Massage?

“It involves applying firm pressure and slow strokes to
reach deeper layers of muscle and fascia (the connective tissue surrounding
muscles). It’s used for chronic aches and pain and contracted areas such
as a stiff neck and upper back, low back pain, leg muscle tightness,
and sore shoulders.” (according to verywellhealth.com)

I don’t want to say that this works 100% for everyone. Maybe for some of
you, it is not recommended at all due to certain health problems. You do it at
your own risk and if you truly want to make sure you will be fine, then consult
a doctor.

There are forerunner steps before the ones that cause extreme pain.
Therefore, not all of them hurt. It usually hurts when the therapist applies
pressure on blockages or when he needs to reach deeper layers of tissue.

With deep tissue massage, I solved neck problems, upper-body muscle
blockages and relaxed my very tensioned legs too [which was the reason I
couldn’t run in the beginning].

When to Do This Therapy?

I now like to train smart and hard. I do it 5 times a week with 2 days of
rest. I continue on this path until I feel like I don’t have the strength
anymore or until I feel my muscles very tensioned or my tendons stiff. I don’t
wait for my muscles, tissue or ligaments to start hurting. I’d say that if you
train intensely than it might be worthwhile to do a deep massage session once
or twice a month.

I hope that my article will help you and I also invite you to read about acupressure therapy. I also do that once in a while and it helps me a lot. If you think that you’re interested in that too, then read below: